Vikings & Beekeepers

90. Passion Pit Manners (2009) 

The older I get and the more focused I am on the realities of life (work, kids, marriage, etc.), the less I care about the fickle nature of the Internet backlash or the cool capital of social currency. I no longer have time to worry about which bands I should be snubbing and which bands I should be championing. All I can rely on are my two ears and a few of my other parts for what’s good and what’s not. That’s why I have yet to turn my nose up on Passion Pit. A Seattle weekly recently described Passion Pit as a band enjoying the spoils of success that belonged to Cut Copy. By my ears (and heart and ass and crotch), Cut Copy has nothing on Passion Pit’s giddy and unabashed chipmunk-soul electro pop (neither do MGMT, Justice, Hot Chip or the Junior Boys for that matter). Maybe it’s my more rockist leanings that lead me to appreciate only the least subtle corners of electronic music, but Manners has an “It” factor that no other artists of a similar ilk have. It could be the joyous rainbow explosion that is album opener “Make Light” or the way that “Moth’s Wings” runs laps around Arcade Fire. Or maybe it’s the take-it-to-the-next-level drum shots that bring “Little Secrets” out of its first chorus or the call-and-response kids choir chorus on “The Reeling.” Or maybe it’s the pretty “Ooh woo oohs” of “Folds In Your Hands” or the over the top lead line that sets “Eyes In Candles” in motion. Or maybe it’s just “Sleepyhead.” Who knows? The highlights are plentiful; the music is fun, fresh and beautiful; and my ears, heart, ass and crotch are always happy to greet Passion Pit. Truth is, when Manners is playing, it becomes my favorite thing ever.

“The Reeling”  

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The 2000s were a pretty important time for me. I turned 18 in 2000, graduating high school soon after, venturing out on my own to college, getting married and having kids. My life has changed drastically in that time and the music I have loved has as well. As I grew up and as my life’s trajectory altered, the music came with me. I didn’t necessarily have the benefit of adolescence in this time so obsession rarely set in the way it did when I was 14 or 15, but I made my way through the decade with a clear soundtrack. This is essentially that soundtrack.

Of course, a top 100 list is not a scientific thing. I could call this list my “Top 100 Favorite” or the “Top 100 Best” and it would make no never mind to me. It’s all the same.

You’ll notice my weak spots on this here list (musically speaking, anyway, I’m hoping there aren’t to many weak spots in my writing – although there most definitely are a lot of them). As varied as this list is in terms of genre and cultural representation, chances are the majority of the albums that pop up on here will feature white boys with guitars. I can’t help it, I’ve got rockist leanings. With that said, there isn’t any album here I would consider to be anything less than absolutely fantastic and worthy or at least a listen.

And while I am just one man and a list of 100 albums is actually quite a lot, there are a lot of bands and albums that didn’t make the cut and absolutely deserve mention. So all apologies to: My Morning Jacket, Pinback, The Flaming Lips, Black Dice, Separation Sunday, Why?, Black Mountain, Alcest, Apple O‘, The Game, Don Caballero, Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes, Phoenix, Broken Social Scene, Daft Punk, Sky Blue Sky, Big Business/Melvins, Sonic Nurse, Beanie Sigel, Bon Iver, Master And Everyone, Silkworm, Converge, Scarface, Ryan Adams, Joe Lally, Brightblack Morning Light, Queens Of The Stone Age, Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle, Calexico, Nachtmystium, The Mae Shi, Oxford Collapse, Electric Version, The Knife, Liars, Lightning Bolt, Hearts Of Oak, John Vanderslice and Neurosis.

I will be posting this list 10 songs at a time, ending appropriately enough, with the No. 1 album of the decade. I expect everything to be posted within two weeks. Then we can get back to my regularly scheduled programming (one update every three months). Enjoy (and comment)!

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It’s easy to overlook EPs. They’re usually intended as teasers or add-ons, just a little taste before the main course comes along. Sometimes, though, a smaller sample size can be a positive, with individual songs being given the opportunity to have more impact. On an EP, there really isn’t much room for filler. These 10 EPs are proof that good things come in small packages.

This is me officially kicking off my decade in review. I’m in the middle of my top 100 albums of the 2000s. There will be a couple lists following that and then it will be back to normal. Expect to see part one of my top 100 within the week. (more…)

Here’s my top 10 from ‘09. Sorry it’s all so late. Between work, having a new baby and having a toddler, it sometimes seems that blogging takes a backseat. Shame on me. Anyway, these “write-ups” are a little half-assed. Sorry.

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Boy, am I late on this one or what? OK, so I still am working on that onslaught of lists to end all onslaughts of lists, even if it is a day late and a dollar short. So forgive me if this list feels a little…half-assed. I’ve been focusing on other future posts more lately, so I had to really force this one together. Anyway, to help force my hand, I’m only posting the first half of my year-end list. The top ten will come soon (I’m half done). In the meantime, here’s how I saw 2009. Enjoy! 

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Last year I did a list of the 10 worst songs from 2008’s great albums and I had so much fun doing it that I decided to give it another shot for ’09. Unfortunately, I didn’t really hear a lot that I actively disliked from my favorite albums. Sure, there were a few stinkers from some albums, but too often I was complaining about songs that didn’t really service their corresponding albums or in other cases were just a tad overrated. None were necessarily that “awful.” Still, I’ve got issues with all these songs, but it doesn’t get really bad until over half way through. These artists are on watch anyway. 

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With 2009 coming to an end, so does the decade. Of course, for music blogs, that means lists, lists and a few more lists. Well, let me just say, “Me too!” I’ve got a slew of lists planned for what I’m assuming will be the next few months, with some year-end stuff coming just around the corner and some decade reflections coming shortly after. I have a top 100 of the decade all planned out along with a list of the decade’s best EPs, but until then, let’s start slowly with my final Quarterly Review of the year. Happy 2010, everyone.

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The cliché for most of these “Check Your Blind Spots” entries is that the artist in question was someone I just missed out on due to my age or simply refused to embrace due to some bulshitty backlash of my own creation.

Metallica is a bit of both. Metallica’s fourth album, …And Justice For All  came out when I was six, several years before something like metal would be a viable genre to listen to (at the time, my idea of metal was “Ballroom Blitz” – close, but not quite). By the time I was of age (let’s say 14 or 15), pop punk was my drug of choice and Metallica (circa Garage Inc.) was considered to be the enemy. That’s not to say that I wasn’t exposed to Metallica at the time, but they were a band associated with a certain kind of person in my town and I tried to keep my encounters with those dirtstach’d and mulleted heshers to a minimum. No one wants to have his bike stolen, especially by some skinny burnout in an AC/DC tour shirt.

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It’s a curious case about Captain Beefheart’s (aka Don Van Vliet) Trout Mask Replica. On the one hand, it’s one of those iconic albums with its immediately recognizable album art and its token position as the lone “out” album on any middlebrow magazine’s greatest records of all time list. On the other hand – quick, name me one song off the album! OK, that might not be fair, but I’ve had many first-hand experiences where self-professed Beefheart fans say, “Trout Mask? Ehhhh, it’s overrated.”

On one side of the spectrum, Trout Mask Replica is the “If you only own one Captain Beefheart album…”, while on the other side it’ often considered a mere lesser light in a storied and celebrated career or simply one of those albums that Just. Doesn’t. Hold. Up.

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Every time I do one of these, it feels like there’s one album that really stands out, followed by a glut of solid albums that are good, but don’t resonate at the same level. Every quarter seems to go like that, including this one, but sometimes the last week or two of the quarter brings in a wealth of albums that seem so good, but provide you with significantly less time to really soak them in. That’s what happened here. I don’t really know how much some of these albums will hold up or how much they can improve with time, but a few of the albums on this list feel like something special even though they have all the hallmarks of being “growers.” On top of that, I haven’t even heard new albums by Mission of Burma, Om, Tyondai Braxton, Why?, Circulatory System or Kid Cudi. So…things could change by the end of the year.

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